Chapter 5 Axel
“I’m sorry, Axel. I have to cancel.”
When the phone on the wall first rang, he didn’t realize answering it would deliver such a disappointment. If he knew, he would have let it ring all damn day.
“Why?”
“Something broke, and we need the van to grab materials for it.”
“What broke?” When he was disappointed, Axel tended toward stubborn nosiness.
“The chicken coop needs to be reinforced.”
“You have chickens? I wanna come along!”
“No!” She sounded appalled. “You’re a guest on vacation. Why in the world would you want to go to a hardware store?”
To be with you, his wayward brain answered automatically. His voice of reason, thankfully, prevailed.
“I’m crazy bored, Oleanna. There’s only so much Netflix I can watch and books I can read.”
It was true. Jet lag caused him to wake up at dawn. “There’s nothing to do except lather myself with green gel and play video games.”
“How is your burn?” She sounded concerned. He almost pulled the rub your soft hands on my back to find out strategy.
He restrained himself from using the pity card. “Better. Don’t change the subject. Let me help.”
“No, I can’t, I—”
“I need to pick something up, too!”
He barely held back laughter when he recognized the solution to this and other dilemmas. He not only needed to spend the day with Oleanna; he also required independent transportation for the next two weeks. Most of all, he was dying to impress a girl.
“What do you need to pick up? I’ll get it for you.”
“A convertible and some halo-halo. I’m waiting outside. Let me in the van before I burn again,” he stated before hanging up.
He would not give her a chance to protest.
Axel scrolled through his phone to find the coolest convertible he could get his hands on. Out of nowhere and beyond expectation, nothing was more important than taking this gorgeous girl out for a drive around the island.
Greg, Axel, and Oleanna went to a suburban shopping mall off the interstate. In the hardware store, Oleanna efficiently kept her uncle focused and itemized the materials they purchased.
To top it off, he couldn’t believe Oleanna had meant to carry all that stuff with her uncle. Supplies to reinforce a chicken coop and make gutter repairs filled the van. They managed to fit fencing materials and lumber, gutter filters and tools.
With everything loaded, they drove to the car rental.
At first, Oleanna was reluctant to abandon her uncle. Fortunately, the older man wrote out a grocery list, giving her a reason to stay in town.
Axel watched Oleanna while the rental agent walked them to the red convertible Mustang. It was the last car at the end of an indoor parking lot, obnoxiously flashy and impractical for someone already burnt.
She looked like she wasn’t sure if she should laugh at him for renting something as loud as his Hawaiian shirt or hug him for arranging an afternoon of fun. He had his hopes on the latter, but either way, nothing felt better than his girl slipping into thepassenger seat. Beside him. With him.
Wait. When had he started thinking about Oleanna as his?
He shoved the unexpected thought away and fixed his mirrors. It was dark in the corner of the rental garage, yet her bare thighs were no less of a distraction. The coconut aroma of her skin, when she whipped around to grab her seatbelt, almost made him growl with hunger.
He was about to start the car when Oleanna held out a tube of sunscreen. One look at her expression revealed she wasn’t playing around, so he mimed the same slathering over arms, legs, and face that she was doing.
“You need to spread it right here,” she laughed, pointing at his forehead. He swiped a hand across it.
“That made it worse, silly.”
She reached over to smooth out the lotion. Her small hands moved competently along his temples and down his nose. She passed over his chin and accidentally brushed his lower lip with her thumb. Oleanna froze.
It was like the night before, when she realized she was touching him and forced herself to stop. Even when she didn’t want to stop. Or was it Axel who needed her hands like he needed his next breath?
He knew one thing. He was going to do everything he could to encourage her to continue. Before she pulled away, Axel gently circled her wrist.
“I love it when you touch me.”
“Oh, well, um, everything is good now so, yeah.” She tugged her hand away and faced forward, looking embarrassed and cute and perfect.
“You missed a spot, too,” Axel said, pointing to her nose while declaring a shameless lie. She was about to lower the visor to check the mirror. He reached over to stop her.
“Here, let me,” he said while grazing a finger under her chin to turn her head gently.
He repeated her actions, moving over her forehead and down her nose. She laughed at his expression of concern. That, and the thrill of her skin’s softness, shot blood down south. His dick was as erect as the car’s gearshift.
He gently grazed a thumb on her lower lip. He watched in fascination as her eyes closed and she sighed. Axel grunted in approval when she leaned her cheek into his palm.
Finally, after fantasizing about it from the moment she walked into his life under a canopy of flowers, he wrapped a hand behind her neck to entangle his fingers into the thick, black strands.
“Can I kiss you? Oleanna, will you let me kiss you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
Her answer was a shaky breath and a slow nod.
His body’s response was so powerful, it took everything to control the heat, the urgency, the lust coursing through him. Axel shifted his body to face her and grazed his lips against her mouth, snagging their fullness and eliciting the sexiest moan. He tried to start slowly, his firm lips coaxing her to relax, to surrender.
A delicious flick of her tongue and a slight nibble of her teeth transformed the energy between them. He stopped, pulled back to check her eyes, and found a world of permission in them.
Axel and Oleanna crashed the way a wave crashes on rock—violently exploding till one entity fully encompassed the other. Their tongues joined greedily, sucking and relishing with desperation. The delicious heat of her mouth, the soft whimpers of desire, the feel of her back against his forearm, and the smoothness of her thigh against his other palm delivered more erotic passion than he ever experienced. Her hand discovered his thick ridge and palmed the base firmly.
“Oleanna, that feels amazing. You’re amazing,” he mumbled while kissing down her neck and surrendering to the intoxicating aroma of her skin. “How do you taste this good?”
One hand continued to rub his groin while the other, clasping his head into her neck, tugged at his hair’s thickness. “I taste like sunscreen.” She giggled.
“And sunshine and coconut,” he moaned, continuing to lick and nip lower, to her collarbone, and toward the top of her breasts. “And sugar. Oleanna, you taste so fucking sweet.” And because she let him, Axel ran the tip of his tongue over her shirt, where a hard nipple puckered.
She might have pulled some strands out of his head. He didn’t care because she also pulled at his cock. He hadn’t been this aroused by a make-out session in, well, ever.
The sound of footsteps echoed across the parking garage, making her jump away from him. Axel grazed his hand on her back and invited their foreheads to touch. She looked flushed and embarrassed, aroused and starved. So, so beautiful.
He could take her right here, his dick a steel pipe by now. But more than anything, he wanted her to want him, too. To feel safe and ready. He quelled the selfish desire to devour her mouth, to grab her curves, to explore her body.
Instead, Axel cooled the hell down.
“What do you say we grab those groceries and treat ourselves to three thousand sweet calories?”
Her smile was sunshine. “We can go to the Filipino market for the food. They serve halo-halo at the small restaurant across the street.”
That’s exactly what they did.